Literary Character of Men of Genius Part 35

[Footnote A: Such are the descriptions of the British sovereign, to be found in Cowell's curious book, ent.i.tled "The Interpreter." The reader may further trace the modern genius of Blackstone, with an awful reverence, dignifying the venerable nonsense--and the commentator on Blackstone sometimes labouring to explain the explanations of his master; so obscure, so abstract, and so delicate is the phantom which our ancient lawyers conjured up, and which the moderns cannot lay.]

James I. while he held for his first principle that a sovereign is only accountable to G.o.d for the sins of his government, an harmless and even a n.o.ble principle in a religious prince, at various times acknowledged that "a king is ordained for procuring the prosperity of his people." In his speech, 1603, he says,

"If you be rich I cannot be poor; if you be happy I cannot but be fortunate. My worldly felicity consists in your prosperity. And that I am a servant is most true, as I am a head and governour of all the people in my dominions. If we take the people as one body, then as the head is ordained for the body and not the body for the head, so must a righteous king know himself to be ordained for his people, and not his people for him."

The truth is always concealed by those writers who are cloaking their antipathy against monarchy, in their declamations against the writings of James I. Authors, who are so often influenced by the opinions of their age, have the melancholy privilege of perpetuating them, and of being cited as authorities for those very opinions, however erroneous.

At this time the true principles of popular liberty, hidden in the const.i.tution, were yet obscure and contested; involved in contradiction, in a.s.sertion and recantation;[A] and they have been established as much by the blood as by the ink of our patriots. Some n.o.ble spirits in the Commons were then struggling to fix the vacillating principles of our government; but often their private pa.s.sions were infused into their public feelings; James, who was apt to imagine that these individuals were instigated by a personal enmity in aiming at his mysterious prerogative, and at the same time found their rivals with equal weight opposing the novel opinions, retreated still farther into the depths and arcana of the const.i.tution.

Modern writers have viewed the political fancies of this monarch through optical instruments not invented in his days.

[Footnote A: Cowell, equally learned and honest, involved himself in contradictory positions, and was alike prosecuted by the King and the Commons, on opposite principles. The overbearing c.o.ke seems to have aimed at his life, which the lenity of James saved. His work is a testimony of the unsettled principles of liberty at that time; Cowell was compelled to appeal to one part of his book to save himself from the other.]

When Sir Edward c.o.ke declared that the king's royal prerogative being unlimited and undefined, "was a great overgrown monster;" and, on one occasion, when c.o.ke said before the king, that "his Majesty was defended by the laws,"--James, in anger, told him he spoke foolishly, and he said he was not defended by the laws, but by G.o.d (alluding to his "divine right"); and sharply reprimanded him for having spoken irreverently of Sir Thomas Crompton, a civilian; a.s.serting, that Crompton was as good a man as c.o.ke. The fact is, there then existed a rivalry between the civil and the common lawyers. c.o.ke declared that the common law of England was in imminent danger of being perverted; that law which he has enthusiastically described as the perfection of all sense and experience. c.o.ke was strenuously opposed by Lord Bacon and by the civilians, and was at length committed to the Tower (according to a MS. letter of the day, for the cause is obscure in our history), "charged with speaking so in parliament as tended to stir up the subjects' hearts against their sovereign."[A] Yet in all this we must not regard James as the despot he is represented: he acted as Elizabeth would have acted, for the sacredness of his own person, and the integrity of the const.i.tution. In the same ma.n.u.script letter I find that, when at Theobalds, the king, with his usual openness, was discoursing how he designed to govern; and as he would sometimes, like the wits of all nations and times, compress an argument into a play on words,--the king said, "I will govern according to the good of the _common-weal_, but not according to the _common-will!_"

[Footnote A: The following anecdotes of Lord Chief Justice c.o.ke have not been published. They are extracts from ma.n.u.script letters of the times: on that occasion, at first, the patriot did not conduct himself with the firmness of a great spirit.

_Nov. 19, 1616._

"The thunderbolt hath fallen on the Lord c.o.ke, which hath overthrown him from the very roots. The supersedeas was carried to him by Sir George Coppin, who, at the presenting of it, received it with dejection and tears. _Tremor et successio non cadunt in fortem et constantem_. I send you a distich on the Lord c.o.ke--

"Jus condere Cocus potuit, sed condere jure Non potuit; potuit condere jura cocis."

It happened that the name of c.o.ke, or rather Cook, admitted of being punned on, both in Latin and in English: for he was lodged in the Tower, in a room that had once been a kitchen, and as soon as he arrived, one had written on the door, which he read at his entrance--

"This room has long wanted a Cook."

"The Prince interceding lately for _Edward c.o.ke_, his Majesty answered, 'He knew no such man.' When the Prince interceded by the name of Mr. c.o.ke, his Majesty still answered, 'He knew none of that name neither; but he knew there was one Captain c.o.ke, the leader of the faction in parliament.'"

In another letter, c.o.ke appears with greater dignity. When Lord Arundel was sent by the king to c.o.ke, a prisoner in the Tower, to inform him that his Majesty would allow him to consult with eight of the best learned in the law to advise him for his cause, c.o.ke thanked the king, but he knew himself to be accounted to have as much skill in the law as any man in England, and therefore needed no such help, nor feared to be judged by the law. He knew his Majesty might easily find, in such a one as he, whereby to take away his head; but for this he feared not what could be said.

"I have heard you affirm," said Lord Arundel, "that by law, he that should go about to withdraw the subjects' hearts from their king was a traitor."

Sir Edward answered, "That he held him an arch-traitor."

James I. said of c.o.ke, "That he had so many shifts that, throw him where you would, he still fell upon his legs."

This affair ended with putting Sir Edward c.o.ke on his knees before the council-table, with an order to retire to a private life, to correct his book of Reports, and occasionally to consult the king himself. This part of c.o.ke's history is fully opened in Mr. Alexander Chalmers's "Biographical Dictionary."]

THE KING'S ELEVATED CONCEPTION OF THE KINGLY CHARACTER.

But what were the real thoughts and feelings of this presumed despot concerning the duties of a sovereign? His Platonic conceptions inspired the most exalted feelings; but his gentle nature never led to one act of unfeeling despotism. His sceptre was wreathed with the roses of his fancy: the iron of arbitrary power only struck into the heart in the succeeding reign. James only menaced with an abstract notion; or, in anger, with his own hand would tear out a protestation from the journals of the Commons: and, when he considered a man as past forgiveness, he condemned him to a slight imprisonment; or removed him to a distant employment; or, if an author, like c.o.ke and Cowell, sent him into retirement to correct his works.

In a great court of judicature, when the interference of the royal authority was ardently solicited, the magnanimous monarch replied:--

"Kings ruled by their laws, as G.o.d did by the laws of nature; and ought as rarely to put in use their supreme authority as G.o.d does his power of working miracles."

Notwithstanding his abstract principles, his knowledge and reflection showed him that there is a crisis in monarchies and a period in empires; and in discriminating between a king and a tyrant, he tells the prince--

"A tyranne's miserable and infamous life armeth in end his own subjects to become his burreaux; and although this rebellion be ever unlawful on their part, yet is the world so wearied of him, that his fall is little meaned (minded) by the rest of his subjects, and smiled at by his neighbours."

And he desires that the prince, his son, should so perform his royal duties, that, "In case ye fall in the highway, yet it should be with the honourable report and just regret of all honest men." In the dedicatory sonnet to Prince Henry of the "Basilicon Doron," in verses not without elevation, James admonishes the prince to

Represse the proud, maintaining aye the right; Walk always so, as ever in his sight, Who guards the G.o.dly, plaguing the prophane.

The poems of James I. are the versifications of a man of learning and meditation. Such an one could not fail of producing lines which reflect the mind of their author. I find in a MS. these couplets, which condense an impressive thought on a favourite subject:--

Crownes have their compa.s.se, length of daies their date, Triumphs their tombes, Felicitie her fate; Of more than earth, can earth make none partaker; But knowledge makes the king most like his Maker.[A]

[Footnote A: "Harl. MSS.," 6824.]

These are among the elevated conceptions the king had formed of the character of a sovereign, and the feeling was ever present in his mind.

James has preserved an anecdote of Henry VIII., in commenting on it, which serves our purpose:--

"It was strange," said James I., "to look into the life of Henry VIII., how like an epicure he lived! Henry once asked, whether he might be saved?

He was answered, 'That he had no cause to fear, having lived so mighty a king.' 'But, oh!' said he, 'I have lived too like a king.' He should rather have said, not like a king--for the office of a king is to do justice and equity; but he only served his sensuality, like a beast."

Henry VII. was the favourite character of James I.; and it was to gratify the king that Lord Bacon wrote the life of this wise and prudent monarch.

It is remarkable of James I., that he never mentioned the name of Elizabeth without some expressive epithet of reverence; such as, "The late queen of famous memory;" a circ.u.mstance not common among kings, who do not like to remind the world of the reputation of a great predecessor. But it suited the generous temper of that man to extol the greatness he admired, whose philosophic toleration was often known to have pardoned the libel on himself for the redeeming virtue of its epigram. In his forgiving temper, James I. would call such effusions "the superfluities of idle brains."

"THE BOOK OF SPORTS."

But while the mild government of this monarch has been covered with the political odium of arbitrary power, he has also incurred a religious one, from his design of rendering the Sabbath a day for the poor alike of devotion and enjoyment, hitherto practised in England, as it is still throughout Europe. Plays were performed on Sundays at court, in Elizabeth's reign; and yet "the Protestants of Elizabeth" was the usual expressive phrase to mark those who did most honour to the reformed.

The king, returning from Scotland, found the people in Lancashire discontented, from the unusual deprivation of their popular recreations on Sundays and holidays, after the church service. "With our own ears we heard the general complaint of our people." The Catholic priests were busily insinuating among the lower orders that the reformed religion was a sullen deprivation of all mirth and social amus.e.m.e.nts, and thus "turning the people's hearts." But while they were denied what the king terms "lawful recreations,"[A] they had subst.i.tuted more vicious ones: alehouses were more frequented--drunkenness more general--tale-mongery and sedition, the vices of sedentary idleness, prevailed--while a fanatical gloom was spreading over the country.

[Footnote A: These are enumerated to consist of dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, May-games, Whitsun-ales, Morris-dances, and the setting up of May-poles, and other manly sports.]

The king, whose gaiety of temper instantly sympathised with the mult.i.tude, and perhaps alarmed at this new shape which puritanism was a.s.suming, published what is called "The Book of Sports," and which soon obtained the contemptuous term of "The Dancing Book."

On this subject our recent principles have governed our decisions: with our habits formed, and our notions finally adjusted, this singular state-paper has been reprobated by piety; whose zeal, however, is not sufficiently historical. It was one of the state maxims of this philosophic monarch, in his advice to his son,

"To allure the common people to a common amitie among themselves; and that certain daies in the yeere should be appointed for delighting the people with public spectacles of all honest games and exercise of arms; making playes and lawful games in Maie, and good cheare at Christmas; as also for convening of neighbours, for entertaining friendship and heartliness, by honest feasting and merriness; so that the sabbothes be kept holie, and no unlawful pastime be used. This form of contenting the people's minds hath been used in all well-governed republics."

James, therefore, was shocked at the sudden melancholy among the people.

In Europe, even among the reformed themselves, the Sabbath, after church-service, was a festival-day; and the wise monarch, could discover no reason why, in his kingdom, it should prove a day of penance and self-denial: but when once this unlucky "Book of Sports" was thrown among the nation, they discovered, to their own astonishment, that everything concerning the nature of the Sabbath was uncertain.

THE SABBATARIAN CONTROVERSY.

And, because they knew nothing, they wrote much. The controversy was carried to an extremity in the succeeding reign. The proper hour of the Sabbath was not agreed on: Was it to commence on the Sat.u.r.day-eve? Others thought that time, having a circular motion, the point we begin at was not important, provided the due portion be completed. Another declared, in his "Sunday no Sabbath," that it was merely an ecclesiastical day which may be changed at pleasure; as they were about doing it, in the Church of Geneva, to Thursday,--probably from their antipathy to the Catholic Sunday, as the early Christians had anciently changed it from the Jewish Sat.u.r.day. This had taken place, had the Thursday voters not formed the minority. Another a.s.serted, that Sunday was a working day, and that Sat.u.r.day was the perpetual Sabbath.[A] Some deemed the very name of Sunday profaned the Christian mouth, as allusive to the Saxon idolatry of that day being dedicated to the Sun; and hence they sanctified it with the "Lord's-day."

Others were strenuous advocates for closely copying the austerity of the Jewish Sabbath, in all the rigour of the Levitical law; forbidding meat to be dressed, houses swept, fires kindled, &c.,--the day of rest was to be a day of mortification. But this spread an alarm, that "the old rotten ceremonial law of the Jews, which had been buried in the grave of Jesus,"

was about to be revived. And so p.r.o.ne is man to the reaction of opinion, that, from observing the Sabbath with a Judaic austerity, some were for rejecting "Lord's-days" altogether; a.s.serting, they needed not any; because, in their elevated holiness, all days to them were Lord's-days.[B]